Over and over, he pointed to Scott as proof. The miraculous healing of body, the superhuman strength and perception. Aaron had borne witness to that much at least.
E.T. kept pushing it though, claiming that old Fitzpatrick was now an Angel of God and that if he wanted to, he could fly, or walk on water, or perform any assortment of the old Bible tricks.
That was more than a man like Aaron could swallow.
He had seen a lot of things in his life. The best and worst mankind could dish. But winged people battling for the world?
No.
“Alright, I do agree that I can be doing more out there.” Aaron conceded reluctantly. He swung his arm in a gesture meant to encompass everything outside of his own garage.
“Where do you think I should start?”
A lot of things had burnt down in those first two days of madness. Maybe he could help rebuild. Any place where people gathered was constantly under siege by large groups of the afflicted. Perhaps guard duty or something like that.
E.T. had other things in mind.
“You’ve got to help fight them.”
Aaron had of course thought of this already.
Each of the people changed by whatever was happening bore very close resemblance to what had robbed him of his new wife. Ultimately, it was that very fact that had kept him from charging into the night, fully armed and hell bent. Indiscriminate killing was never an answer, and this disease -or whatever it was- seemed to be largely indiscriminate. While it apparently didn’t effect children;
Thank God
Kids were spared, but nobody else seemed safe. Young and old. Men and women. The poor, the rich, white, black, brown, yellow, fat, thin. Aaron had seen all kinds affected.
Worse, those suffering the change contradicted even E.T.’s far-fetched theory. Missionaries, clergy and philanthropists were among those that came to the hospital and turned out deranged and wicked. ‘Possessed’ E.T. called them.
In further contradiction, more than a few homeless junkies recovered in line with whatever Scott had been through. If God and Satan were recruiting, it would appear that sometimes the players ended up on the wrong team.
Which team am I on?
Aaron cast as sidelong glance at the older man still seated on his motorcycle suspiciously, as if E.T. could read his mind and the doubt within. Pressing questions itched in his consciousness as well. What were the qualifications for the suffering and salvation being meted out seemingly at random? What about the damnation of those many people who seemed uncontrollably bent by hate for Scott and the others like him? Aaron had a hard time believing that after all of the killing he’d done in the name of duty, the divorce, his time with Bluejean… After all of the lives he’d help save, take, fracture, build- it seemed more logical that he belonged on one side of the fence or another. Life’s middle grounds were always more uncertain and dangerous. He didn’t want to be on that middle ground.
Didn’t want to accept that Allie, the wife he’d just buried, lived there as well.
If what E.T. and Lougee had told them at the hospital was true; Scott and those like him were Heaven-sent, their opposites Hell-bound, and the rest were stuck somewhere between.
Purgatory.
The notion didn’t sit well with Aaron Dayne.
For the thousandth time he reprimanded himself for granting too much credibility to the claims of crazy old men.
Huge numbers of people were having these tremors and going through something unprecedented in all of history. That much was certain. But the vast majority of the population was unaffected. Most people –Aaron included- were struck trying to adjust to life in a broken society and ration food and protect their families and survive.
Survive.
Something most Americans never really had to learn how to do. Most didn’t know how.
But I do.
“I can’t just go around and start shooting people. These are everyday, average people. Car salesmen and accountants and teachers. Some of those freaks at the hospital were just kids, high school age, maybe.”
E.T. nodded understandingly, and paused just a half-breath too long before he spoke, like he always did.
“One correction. They were everyday average people. Call it possessed or sick or whatever else you want, but the everyday people are the ones hiding in their houses scared right now.”
A single vein in his temple bulged as he tried to convince the younger man.
“You’ve seen how they act! The bloodshot eyes and the fevers and all the rest. They have to be stopped. Every last one of them. Young ones and the women too.”
Something inside of Aaron wouldn’t let him buy in completely, even though he knew this half-stranger was telling some version of the truth. He opened his mouth to speak, closed it again. Repeated the same motion, looking like a fish.
E.T. wasn’t finished.
“I don’t know how it works exactly, but it’s plain that there is a good side and a bad side. Black and white. God and the Devil. And they are going to fight it out, right here in the city. In every other city on the planet too, for that matter. That’s what they were doing in the hospital.” He lowered his voice. “You have seen firsthand what can happen when innocent people get caught in the middle.”
Steely gray eyes dropped to the floor for the first time. Nobody wanted to look into Aaron’s face when they alluded to his wife’s death.
His already raw heart freshly salted, Aaron turned away. Glinting from the work bench, the guns drew his eye, oiled and shining. Ready.
At the edges of vision and consciousness, specters of red flitted and shined. Just beyond where he could grasp them and either push them out or pull them in. He was about to relapse, to fall back into a life that had almost claimed his mind and soul once. Tingling in his fingers and hair told him that the decision was already made. It had probably been made weeks ago, when he’d seen the images of murder on television and felt the familiar stirrings. Muscles strained against dirty cotton as he heaved a resigned sigh. He turned back to face the gray man, but not before grabbing a handful of cold steel in each hand.
“Alright, where do you think I should start?”
A joyless almost-smile appeared for an instant on the other man’s face.
“You can’t just run off like a vigilante, they will kill you.”
I doubt it.
The disbelief must have registered on his face, because E.T. reiterated his point.
“If you try to do this on your own, they will kill you eventually. We need to organize, to get help and to be the help.”
“Organize who? Or what? How do you propose we do that?” Now that his mind was made up to fight, Aaron was impatient for action.
“The only way you or I know how, son.” He pointed at an old poster on the wall. It was pocked with dart holes and torn and faded, but Aaron got the gist.
“Call in the Marines?” Sarcasm and not a small amount of disbelief loaded the words so they hung in the garage air.
“Something like that.’ E.T. nodded “Nobody is better prepared to handle crisis than America’s military, but this is too much even for them. Killing civilians is an unpleasant job.” At this the gray eyes flitted to the floor for a nanosecond. Aaron wondered just how much of his past this man knew. He’d been a decorated war hero by age twenty-two, but there was enough innocent blood on his hands to prevent him from polishing those medals with pride.
“The military has ways of excusing it, collateral damage, cost of freedom, all that. But this is different. This will be more like the Civil War. Taking out friends and neighbors. The battlefield is real close to home. It’s going to get very ugly.”
Gooseflesh stood on Dayne’s arms at the thought of it. A warzone was a horrible place, and soon that horrible place would literally be out the front door for many people.
E.T. wasn’t finished.
”There are not enough of the Angels; the people like Scott, to stop the sinners. You and I have a responsibility to u
se our military connections to get things moving, to help the holy side.”
Aaron hated the verbiage.
Angels? Holy side?
“I haven’t exactly been great about keeping in touch. My service is a time I’ve tried to put behind me.” Aaron still wasn’t sure how he felt about his detachment.
“That doesn’t matter. Leave the talking to me and let your service distinctions do the talking for you. They will listen to some of their own right now. Especially if we can offer them answers.”
Aaron wanted to argue, to tell him that the answers weren’t exactly easy to swallow. But he didn’t. Instead, another deep sigh blew up the shelf dust. He turned and pointed at E.T. with a work-worn finger in the dusky garage light.
“I’ll give you one week. One! Contact whoever you need to contact and make arrangements. I’m on board to join this fight. But the moment I feel like my family is in danger, I’m out. Anyone comes after my boy, I’m out. And if they don’t want my help, I’m out.” It would be different, to soldier without being required.
“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Aaron added with finality.
Something like sadness registered in the other man’s eyes. The first display of emotion Aaron had seen.
“Unfortunately son, I do.”
With that, E.T. left the garage. He had a strange way of moving, Aaron noticed, like his stride was too smooth and didn’t make enough noise. There had been a few CIA spooks in Argentina that moved like that. But E.T. was a retired Marine so far as he knew, and nothing else. There had to be something else. What kind of a person just showed up out of nowhere when the shit hits the fan?
A born fighter, that’s who.
Alone now, Aaron plopped down sideways onto the saddle of his motorcycle, noting with irritation that the leather was warm from the older man’s body heat. He stared over at the workbench and his guns.
He would rather ply different tools at a different trade, but once again he’d been called to fight. Maybe that was God’s plan for him.
Maybe that had been the plan all along.
He had a hard time finding faith in even his own rationalizations. It was hard to believe that divine influence had anything to do with all of this carnage.
Why would God want me to kill more people? Why would he take my wife?
Better to get out of the garage and back inside with his son. Any time together seemed that much more precious now.
The wrinkly snout of Pig met him at the door, excited and happy. A huge shift from the previous plaintive whine that Aaron found sad, but also appropriate. Allie had always spoiled the pups, fed them table scraps and laughed at Aaron’s protests. They would miss her too.
Pig pushed his wrinkly snout into Aaron’s hand and rooted around his pockets. Whined again. This time as though he wanted to play.
Aaron stepped through the open door and was stunned to see a man there in the yard.
Not just any man, a moment’s recognition told him. It was the man from the hospital, the one who’d been helping Scott fight.
The stranger who was somehow not a stranger.
He stood over the just-covered grave, staring at it intently and scratching the ears of Xerxes, who leaned affectionately against the perfectly-muscled thighs. Pig trotted over and nuzzled the man’s other hand, then looked to Aaron, revealing what he was so excited about.
Xerxes was always friendly. Pig was usually standoffish with strangers.
Not now.
The Shar-Pei sat down, almost on top of the Stranger’s foot, yawning contentedly.
They know this guy?
At the sound of his approach, the Stranger looked up, and Aaron was puzzled to see tears coursing down the handsome cheeks.
For a long moment the two just stared at one another.
The other man smiled a brilliant but melancholy smile through his tears.
Perfect teeth shined pearly in the waning light. He looked again at the grave before he rolled his eyes up toward the clouds that shone coral and purple with the last vestiges of daylight.
Aaron wanted desperately for the man to say something. To explain why he was here and who he was and why he was crying over Allie’s grave.
Scott had told him this stranger never spoke a word, that he was mute, so Aaron didn’t expect anything. Instead the stranger smiled even wider, and for some reason Aaron couldn’t help but want to smile with him. He almost did.
From a back pocket the man produced something small and shiny and tossed it through the distance separating them. It whistled lightly in the air before Dayne snatched it. He turned it over in his hands, more deeply puzzled.
What the…?
Then it hit him. That little conglomeration of metal and wood in his palm answered so many of the questions he had built up over the last week. Staring at the harmonica, he realized for the first time who this man was. It somehow made sense, though he looked completely different now, all muscled and handsome and statuesque.
Perfect.
Like he always was deep down.
Tears welled up again in Aaron’s eyes, and finally he did answer the smile. Of course the dogs acted so familiar. Here was one of their favorite friends.
Aaron shook his head and let relief wash over him and sweep away some of the sorrow that weighed heavy around his neck. He searched for words. Found none.
The erstwhile-stranger wiped away his own tears, stepped backward and waved a little. A parting gesture.
Then Aaron saw something that he would never forget.
A pair of enormous wings that were not there in the previous breath, that could not really be there, spread wide. Pearly white plumage framed his shoulders and head. The wings were glorious, larger than any bird’s by a long stretch. They shimmered in the sunset with prismic beauty.
Angel wings.
Aaron Dayne stood transfixed, skeptic made believer in one powerful instant.
He had heard the rumblings and the rumors that there were angels at work. Now he saw for himself. None of it made sense, but he no longer expected it to.
Feathers flexed, and with a whoosh that stirred the grass and sweaty shirt on Aaron’s back, the man lifted high into the air. Another beat and he was above the trees and wheeling away. As he and the dogs watched, four more of the winged people joined him.
A flock of angels.
He watched them go until he couldn’t anymore. Only then did he realize he was still smiling. He looked once again at the harmonica in his palm and read aloud the name of the angel that was engraved there on the brass. The name that nobody ever really called him.
“Eugene Moss.”
Hurricane, Utah
“Serena wake up.”
She did. Waking was a different experience than it had ever been.
Mornings had never been her thing, but the typical grogginess and slowness of thought was absent now. At the sound of Dr. Peel’s voice, she was wide awake.
Instant awareness took some getting used to.
She wondered if she looked like hell, the way she typically did when waking, or if her inner alertness reflected on the outside as well.
“What is it? Where are we?” The smell of the air and waxing light told her it was morning.
Haley wore a serious expression. Her eyes were wet in the manner of something bordering on hysteria. Knuckles clutched white on the steering wheel. They had been driving for hours, inching north along the backroads and rural highways in an effort bypass the clogged interstate. The veterinarian had pulled them into a small town called Hurricane, Utah.
Serena felt like she’d been there before, long ago. She recalled that the locals pronounced their town’s name awkwardly. Hurr-uh-ken.
Through the windshield, the town looked almost comically simple, one main drag with only a mile or two of anything to speak of in the way of commerce. There were three churches, a trailer park, some quaint little housing developments, and a small high school.
Serena watched a “Home of the Tigers
” sign retreat in the side view mirror as they crawled along. She sat up a little straighter, seeing now what had caused her friend to slow. Bare fence posts stood at intervals along the road, the chain link that had once strung between them gone missing. It was the yard of a church.
“Stop the car Haley.”
Before they even stopped rolling Serena was out.
The air hung heavy with ominous reek. A hot breeze blew carrion scent across the deserted road. It was almost too much to bear.
“Serena wait. Something is wrong here. I haven’t seen any people at all. They’ve all gone somewhere.”
Internal alarms rang at this tidbit of news. Everywhere they had been, every town they’d passed through, was abuzz with activity. Half of the population seemed intent on fortifying their yards and vehicles. Battening down to endure the madness or bustling through grocers and drugstores to stockpile anything of worth. Some houses appeared deserted, but the flitting faces behind curtains and rapid on-offs of lights in a basement window told the real story.
According to Haley, this town revealed none of that.
The air carried more than stink on it.
A thick wrongness brushed across Serena’s skin as she stepped out away from the car and into the wind. Other vehicles were parked along the side of the road. Some had windows broken out and flat tires. Far off, at the very edge of even Serena’s accentuated hearing, some animal yowled. Aside from that, wind was the only sound. The relative stillness had an eerie effect.
Haley killed the engine of their car and climbed out. She came around and stood close to Serena, pushing against her like a child.
“My God. Haley, do you realize what that smell is?”
Of course she did. The veterinarian’s nose had been trained by years around large predators. She was plenty familiar with the stench of death.
Except this was flavored differently. Burning death.
Both women craned their necks and looked around cautiously. They saw only the strange half-fence and the grass beyond it. Abandoned cars and broken windows stared back at them like lonely animals. The two wandered together, drawn by curiosity through the ghost town.
To Light Us, To Guard Us (The Angel War Book 1) Page 25